1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains generally to the field of display units and/or crew alerting units that provide flight and/or ground information to the pilot or flight crew of an aircraft.
2. Description of the Related Art
Runway incursions are the most noticeable form of taxi navigation errors. Increased scrutiny by regulatory authorities has only heightened the awareness of the safety issues related to runway incursions. Taxi navigation errors cause many runway incursions and present potential collision hazards.
Systems used for presenting runway incursion and/or basic surface traffic information to a pilot for avoiding runway incursions may comprise of two basic components. One component could comprise the display of airport, airport surfaces, and/or and other information on a visual display unit, wherein such display could show ground and/or air traffic. Another component could comprise advisories such as caution and/or warning alerts that could be generated by a processor employing one or more runway incursion-related algorithms to known traffic information.
A runway incursion system may comprise of a navigation reference database for constructing airport surface maps, GPS-based own-ship positions, GPS-based traffic positions, automatic transmission of cooperative traffic positions through systems such as an automatic dependent surveillance broadcast (“ADS-B”) system, and automatic re-transmission of uncooperative traffic positions through systems such as a traffic information service-broadcast (“TIS-B”) system. Although these systems improve situational awareness, there are deficiencies. There is a lack of available navigation reference database for constructing airport surface maps. Also, the introduction of an ADS-B system may be slow and/or the mandated use of such system could be delayed for many years. In addition, transmission latency is inherent to both ADS-B and TIS-B systems resulting in traffic position uncertainty.